All About Time Signatures

Welcome to Lesson #12. My previous introduction to time signatures back in lesson 2 and 3 were not nearly enough of an introduction to time signatures. That's why in this lesson you'll learn a more detailed overview of time signatures. Do you remember what time signatures were? They're the two little numbers located at the beginning of and sometimes in every line of the music. The top number, as I said before, tells the musician how many beats each measure gets. The bottom number shows the musician which note gets each beat. If there's a 4, a quarter note gets a beat. If there's a 2 on the bottom, then a half note gets a beat. If there is an 8, then an eighth note gets the beat and so on.

This lesson is constructed differently from all the other lessons. The following two measures of music are not meant to be played. In fact, if you look closely you'll see something wrong, in terms of the number of beats in each measure. This is your first two measures. Find something wrong with it. If you think you have found the mistake, click next for the answer.